Biodegradation

It’s tempting to think of purchasing plastic cups labeled as compostable or using plastic cutlery made of biodegradable materials as a better choice for the environment—but there are a lot of complexities at play. A study published Wednesday in PLOS ONE demonstrates how a popular bioplastic advertised as biodegradable does not actually break down in the ocean.Sean Gunn’s Favorite Songs from the Guardians SeriesThe world’s got a big plastic problem, and it’s choking our oceans. For every person on Earth, there are now…

Glass can be cleaned and reused many times, but it doesn’t break down in the environment and can sit in landfills for thousands of years. A team of scientists tried to tackle this problem by developing biodegradable glass that can safely break down over a much shorter period of time.In a study published last week in the journal Science Advances, a team at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Process Engineering describe how theyengineered what they are calling biodegradable glass made from amino acids or…

Traditional plastic is made with crude oil or natural gas, but bioplastic might not be the safest alternative. Image: Breslavtsev Oleg (Shutterstock)As the war on plastic straws rages on, researchers in Korea have created a bioplastic alternative that is made out of potato starch and citric acid. In a paper paper published in ACS Omega, the team saysthat these new straws are stronger than plastic and more durable than paper.To create the straws, researchers led by Dickens O. Agumba from Inha Univeristy in Korea combined…

Compostable plastic that has not fully disintegrated in a compost bin. Photo: Citizen scientist image from www.bigcompostexperiment.org.ukSeemingly every corner of our world is now littered with plastics, and only a tiny percentage of it is ever recycled. To mitigate this, many companies are offering items labeled as “compostable” or “biodegradable” plastic—but as new research finds, those may be a misnomers. 01:25Randall Park's Favorite SuperheroesMonday 5:02PMA study published this week in Frontiers in Sustainability by…

Photo: MikeDotta (Shutterstock)Most bioplastics can’t be put into the same municipal recycling streams as other plastics, since they can contaminate the other plastics and make the whole batch unusable. Many consumer-facing bioplastics, however, can be composted: unlike traditional plastic, a cup made out of some types of bioplastic could be broken down by microbes under the right conditions. In theory, that’s incredibly cool, and may make you feel better about buying something plastic: it won’t last as long in the…